Resident Evil 4 vs Kingdom Hearts II vs The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess vs Half-Life 2 2009
Results Round Two Friday, May 22nd, 2009 Ulti's Analysis Resident Evil 4 and Kingdom Hearts 2 gave us a damn good match in round 1, and they followed it up with their best impression of Super Metroid vs Super Mario Kart. Yes this was a very close match, but it had the excitement of a doorknob given we saw the same exact match with the same exact trends in round 1. In round 1, Resident Evil 4 built up a 1250 vote lead overnight and held on for dear life all throughout Kingdom Hearts 2's day vote, squeaking by with a seemingly close win. I say "seemingly" because RE4 was never really threatened. Round 2 was much different in that RE4 only built up a 700 vote lead before the morning vote, 550 less than in round 1. Had Round 1 perfectly repeated itself, Kingdom Hearts 2 would have made a furious comeback and brought the match down to the wire. But round 1 did not perfectly repeat itself, mainly because of Zelda's presence. Resident Evil 4 surprisingly kept up its pace all the way to the ASV, building up a 2000 vote lead in the face of everyone calling on an RE4 collapse. And make no mistake -- RE4 did collapse here, to the tune of bleeding 1200 votes. It just did so about 6 hours later than expected. RE4 was very lucky Zelda was around to suck up the traditional Kingdom Hearts morning vote, because Kingdom Hearts 2 would have scored the upset had it been able to get going at the same time as round 1. This was the second match in a row in which RE4 was able to squeak by KH2, and RE4 wasn't close to finished its nail-biting matches. This match more or less showed Kingdom Hearts and Zelda share a ton of fans, and you could also definitely call RE4 a quasi-Nintendo game here. Some how, some way, it survived the Kingdom Hearts day vote twice. That's no easy feat, even if it did prove RE4 was not finals-worthy. We also saw here how Twilight Princess was not finals-worthy. If RE4, KH2 and Twilight Princess are all this close, all three could effectively be thrown out of the discussion. Twilight Princess was dangerously close to being in second place this match, and was saved by the ASV. Skipping ahead a bit, Brawl SFFd the living hell out of Mario Galaxy. It was a safe bet based on round 2 results it would beat Twilight Princess handily, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. If you're a finals contender, you don't stay in first place by 200 votes and rely on ASV pushes to score convincing wins, regardless of any weird fanbase splits. If Brawl and Twilight Princess switched places, there's no doubt Brawl would have crushed this poll within 10 minutes. As is, Twilight Princess was at the very least leeched very badly, which was a bad omen given future opponents. This was a pretty bad effort by TP, even considering KH2 and RE4 are both potentially top 15 or 20 around here. There was actually a time in this match where Twilight Princess only led Resident Evil 4 by 9 votes. The same RE4 that bled 1200 votes later. The winner here, even though it lost, was Kingdom Hearts 2. This whole series is no joke, and it taps into a ton of different fanbases all at once. If we could ever get 3 announced, we'd be looking at three different games from the KH series with top 10 potential. Match Trends Ngamer's Same Day Analysis Match Prediction Heck of a matchup tonight! Let's get the easy (?) stuff out of the way first so we can dig into the meat: TP should win comfortably and HL2 should finish 4th comfortably. Post-N64 Nintendo has been sketchy nearly every time out, its true, but as a mid-tier Zelda option in a poll with nothing else Zelda/Mario/Smash, I feel fine backing TP (though I don't expect any kind of blowout). HL2 I actually think will impress by holding on to more of its R1 performance than you might expect, as Gordon often does, but the other options are a step above and with no Samus/Ganon-style SFF to push one of them back down, I can't see it catching up to anything. And so it all comes down to KH2 vs RE4. Let's itemize this baby. Points in KHII's favor: * RE4 has hands in the GC, PS2, and Wii cookie jars. but there's an option here that out prioritizes it on both the GC and Wii (presumably) and another that out prioritizes it on the PS2 * RE4 appeals to voter who like mature, action-heavy FPS adventures, but there's another mature FPS option in this poll * KH2 already came within a few inches of knocking off RE4 once, and its older brother legitimized that performance by looking arguably even more impressive in going toe to toe with FFX * shooters have been bombing relative to expectations this entire season. nearly the only exception to that rule has been HL2, which... doesn't help Leon a bit! * during their R1 matchup, Resident Evil 5 was drawing in tons of RE fans by being the #1 FAQ on the site (except for maybe Pokemon Platinum?). but now the hype has died off and it's currently sitting back in 10th place Golly, not looking for very good for RE fans! Let's see what 4 can counter with. Points in RE4's favor: * um... Gears of War chainsaw LFF? * Nintendo SFF probably doesn't bury it THAT bad, considering how well it held up to all those GC/Wii options in that Game of the Decade poll. then again, FFX held up even better, and we now know that KH1 is only a bit back of X, and KH2 is possibly even stronger than its- you know what, scratch this point Wowza, seems like we have a very clear choice here! I'm going to put my foot down and side with... Resident Evil 4. WHAT? I've decided to overlook overlap and x-stats and past results and take a different perspective on this one. Sure there are thousands of people who like Kingdom Hearts, but there are also a good number that support RE4- and they don't just like it, they love it. Seems to me KH is a series with a very high playrate that would have no trouble beating up on "meh" competition, but that voters would abandon when options they really love come along, and I'd argue there are three of those in tonight's poll. Also I'm expecting Europe to limit KH's damage overnight (they generally love both Valve and Square, but seem pretty apathetic about KH for whatever reason) and Zelda to limit KH's morning and ASV kicks. And if push comes to shove, I don't see any way RE fans allow it to lose a match that's still debatable in the final hour. That's why I'm betting against all of the stats and factors I love so much and pulling the trigger on * The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - 29.97% * Resident Evil 4 - 24.73% * Kingdom Hearts II - 24.70% * Half-Life 2 - 20.61% Whooo! Next Day Review I'm so proud of RE4 right now. *wipes tear from eye* What a trooper, standing up to the two school bullies and showing that yes, it IS possible for a non-Nintendo non-Square game to show some strength on this site. As to how this could have happened despite all stats and prior results pointing against it, I'm again going to bring up the final point from my match preview: well-liked games with huge playrates are always going to be a threat to post big time numbers in the opening rounds, but when the rubber hits the road and the competition stiffens (and I would argue this was the stiffest 4pack so far this season), they're going to wilt in the face of the well-loved options around them. Also want to give a short note of congrats to TP for surviving both the dreaded RE overnight and the dreaded KH afternoon to pull out the hard fought victory- sure this game is far from the the FF7-killer some were hoping for during the peak of its '06 hype, but its still earned plenty of respect from myself with this showing. External Links * Match Updates * Guru Match Predictions * Oracle Match Results • Previous Match • Next Match Category:2009 Spring Contest Matches